


Controlled Burn

by rabbit_hearted



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, please tell me someone caught the parks and rec reference please, so soft, the h/c inside of this bus is astronomical, yeah yeah I changed the title MIND YOUR BUSINESS, you can pry soft kywi from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:00:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26162311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbit_hearted/pseuds/rabbit_hearted
Summary: Despite her best efforts to deny it, Kym Ladell is very sick. Perhaps worse than that, William Hawkes is, by some twist of fate, the only one available to nurse her back to health.
Relationships: William Hawkes/Kym Ladell
Comments: 19
Kudos: 104





	Controlled Burn

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be happy if even one person catches the Parks and Rec reference.

By the time lunch rolls around, Kym is nearly incoherent. Lauren finds her half-asleep at her desk, wisps of hair plastered to her pale forehead, cheeks bitten with fever. Her skin gleams with dew in the pallid overhead light, as though she’d been caught in a passing storm. When she opens her eyes to find Lauren kneeling next to her desk, Kym asks her to open a window. 

“Why?” 

“It’s hot in here.” 

“It’s January. It’s also snowing outside,” Lauren replies. She places the back of her palm against Kym’s forehead and hisses. “Kym, you’re really hot.” 

“Thanks,” Kym murmurs. “You’re not so bad yourself, Sinclair.”

“I wasn’t… Kym, you’re sick. I’m taking you to the infirmary.”

“No!” Kym’s gaze snaps open, darkened and milky with stupor. She reaches forward and claws blindly to capture Lauren’s palm in hers. “Please don’t, Lauren.”

“Why?”

“They’ll give me a shot.” 

“No, they won’t.” Lauren smooths some of Kym’s hair back behind her ear. “They’ll give you some medicine to make you feel better.” 

“I don’t want medicine. Please,” she murmurs, her voice muffled in the crook of her forearm. “Leave me to die.” 

Lauren bites the inside of her cheek. “You’re so dramatic.”

When a new pair of footsteps enter the room, heavy and self-assured and unmistakable in their cadence, Kym groans, low and guttural, like a tortured animal. “ _Great._ ”

“What’s going on?”

Will’s narrowed gaze scrolls over Kym’s dark head, still bent over her folded arms, forehead flush against the desk. His eyes find Lauren’s and they share a brief, silent exchange. 

“Ladell,” Will snaps, “What are you doing?” 

“Nap,” Kym replies. 

“You’re supposed to be leaving for patrol in five minutes.”

“Yes, _Willame,_ ” Kym murmurs, clenching her teeth against a rolling wave of nausea. “That’s five whole minutes from now. Plenty of time for a nap.”

He stops in front of her desk and stares down at her, small and vulnerable, painted in vibrant contrasts. Pale white and candy apple red, like a porcelain doll. “You’re sick,” he says, his tone accusatory. “You need to be seen by the nurse.” 

“I’d sooner die,” Kym says, her voice low with mourning. 

“You will, at this rate,” He says, pinching her wrist between his forefinger and thumb gingerly. Kym picks her head up and fixes Will with a glare, her face haggard. 

“Are you a ghost? Your hand is freezing.”

“My hand isn’t cold,” Will replies. “ _Y_ _ou’re_ hot.” 

“Why does everyone keep flirting with me?” 

Lauren snorts, extending to her full height. The two of them loom over Kym like twin pillars. “No one is flirting with you, Kym. You’re literally burning up. As in, your temperature.” 

“Whatever you say,” Kym replies. She distantly registers that their conversation continues over her head as she drifts into a dreamless rest, plagued by technicolor visions and bizarre, ephemeral shapes. 

When she next awakens, she’s lying on top of stiff, starchy bedsheets. A cool palm cups the side of her face, while the other hovers a pinprick of light in front of her bleary periphery. 

“She’s running a fever,” a woman says. She has a nice voice, Kym thinks, like a warm cup of coffee. Two wide set eyes, dimpled at the edges with smile lines. “Kym, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Kym says. “You have a nice voice. Like coffee.”

“Thanks, honey.”

The woman clicks off her light and turns to someone in the room to murmur something that Kym doesn’t register. She feels hot and cold all at once, her nerve endings frayed and electrified with heightened sensitivity. Sensations become oppressively close, battering into her with acute precision — the shift of the bedsheets against her clammy palms, the tick of the nearby radiator, the squeak of shoes against linoleum. 

“Looks like the flu,” The woman says, scrawling something onto a pad of paper. “She’ll be fine with plenty of fluids and bedrest.” She turns to Kym, tapping the edge of her pencil against her clipboard. “Kym, do you live nearby?”

Kym turns her face up toward the flickering overhead light, entranced by the patterns in the ceiling texture. “Hm. Maybe,” she murmurs.

“She does,” Lauren says. “But she told me that her parents are traveling up north for the next few days.”

“She shouldn’t be left unsupervised while her fever is this high. Is there anywhere else she can stay?”

The next words that are spoken register with perfect clarity, cutting through the fog of her fever with the precision of a scalpel. 

“She can stay with me,” Will says. 

Kym hauls herself up onto her elbows. “What? No.” She shakes her head hard enough that it tips her center of gravity off-kilter. “I’m fine. I don’t get sick.” 

“What do you call this, then?” Will snaps, rolling his eyes. Kym notices that they appear alarmingly blue and clear in the reflection of the window. She blames this sudden observation on her fever. 

“An isolated incident.” She turns to Lauren, drawing her lower lip between her teeth in an exaggerated pout. Lauren bows her head in sympathy.

“I’m sorry, Kym,” Lauren murmurs. “Uncle has friends visiting. There wouldn’t be any room for you.”

Kym curls her palm around the edge of the cot, swallowing bile. “Lauren Sinclair, my dearest friend, abandoning me in my time of need.” 

“Thanks, Ladell,” Will says sourly. “If I knew this was how you’d react to me doing you a _favor,_ I wouldn’t have offered-”

“-And if I knew that I was going to get the _flu,_ I’d have shot myself long before we reached this point-”

Will tosses his palms up, huffing in a humorless laugh. “- _Always_ with the dramatics, Ladell-”

They continue to bicker as Lauren and the nurse look on placidly, their gazes bobbing between the two as though spectating a tennis match. 

“It’s fine,” Kym says, swinging her legs over the side of the cot. “I’m not sick, and no one needs to take care of me.” She hobbles unsteadily to the center of the room. Three pairs of eyes watch her with the sort of wary look one might reserve for witnessing something unavoidable and catastrophic. “Could a sick person do _this_?”

A silent beat passes. Kym watches them pointedly. 

Lauren glances at Will, her brows drawn in. “Do what, Kym?” 

“Cartwheels,” Kym replies. “Am I not doing them?”

Unfortunately, Kym doesn’t get the answer to her question, because it is at that moment that she faints, falling directly into the waiting arms of a rather exasperated William Hawkes. 

* * *

Her first observation is that it smells like winter. Sweet and sharp all at once, like pine needles and cinnamon. She draws in a deep lungful of the scent.

Her second observation is that she is now in a car. And that Will is driving said car. She turns to him, his profile sharp and furrowed with unspoken concern, hands curled tightly around the steering wheel. 

“Your car smells like winter.”

“I…” he pauses. “Have no idea what that means.”

She hums vaguely, sinking further into her seat. “You drive?” 

“Well, I didn’t expect you to be able to walk to my house.” 

Kym turns to lean her forehead against the frosted window, sighing in relief when the cool glass makes contact with her skin. It feels unbelievably good, as though she’d submerged herself in a snowbank. “What happened?”

“Well,” Will says, steering the car onto a narrower side street, “You seem to have a habit of falling into my arms.” 

Kym groans, palming at the nape of her stiff neck. “Only when traumatized. Or deeply ill.” 

“Naturally,” Will replies dryly. 

They lapse into silence for the next few blocks. Ardhalis is rendered in swathes of white, softened under fresh snowfall. The streets are nearly empty, pedestrians and shopkeepers alike swept away with the blustery winds, storefronts and cafes dimmed and lifeless. It’s strange, seeing the city this empty, like driving through a model recreation. 

Will glances at Kym, her head still tipped against the window, somehow appearing even more waifish and gray against the backdrop of the snowfall. Her lids are hooded, as though already halfway inside of a dream. 

“Don’t die on me, Ladell,” He murmurs, nudging her with his elbow. 

“I wouldn’t dare,” she replies, wetting her chapped lips with her tongue. “Are we there yet?”

“Seeing as the car is still moving, no.”

She groans, pressing her face into her palms. “Wait a minute. How did I get to the car?”

Will fixes her with a flat expression. “How do you think? I carried you.” 

Kym’s eyes drift shut in abject horror. 

“Whole precinct saw,” he adds, grinning smugly. 

“I can never show my face again,” she murmurs. 

Kym notices that he’s driven them towards one of the more posh neighborhoods to the east, not far from Lauren’s home. The residences grow in stature as they venture further in, flanked on either side by imposing structures boasting scalloped archways and wrap-around porches in varying shades of neutral. She wonders if wealthy people forget about the rest of the color spectrum when choosing paint colors. There’s something uniform and drab about the architectural choices of the upper echelon. 

“If I had a mansion, I’d paint it yellow,” she says, for no particular reason. 

“Let’s make sure that you survive the flu first,” Will replies. He pulls to a stop in front of a home that is simultaneously austere and humble, somehow. It is exactly the type of home she’d have expected him to live in. 

“Pretty,” she says. 

She glances at him. The tips of his ears are a little pinkened. “Uh. Thanks,” he says, leaning across her to push open her door. 

It isn’t until they make it inside that her fatigue registers, pulling against her consciousness like the grip of an undertow. The foyer is thickly quiet, the sort of silence you can only really achieve while standing within something beautiful and grand.

A housekeeper glances at Will askance and he offers her an appeasing grin. “Thank you, Jane,” he says. “I’ve got it under control.” 

“You’ve ‘got it under control’?” Kym murmurs after she leaves. “Am I the ‘it’?”

“Yes,” Will replies.

She stands at the base of a mahogany staircase, eyeing the second floor landing as though preparing to scale a mountain’s face. 

“Can’t I just take a nap on the floor?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It’s dirty.”

Kym nudges at the marble floor with the toe of her shoe. It’s nearly shiny enough that she can see her reflection. “Looks pretty clean to me.”

Will sighs, pulling a hand through his hair. “You’re not sleeping on the floor, Ladell.”

“Why?”

“The guest room is only one floor up,” he says. “Unless you’d prefer that I carry you _again.”_

Kym grimaces and begins her begrudging ascent. When she stumbles at the lip of the landing, she feels him place his hand at the small of her back to steady her, the gesture as natural to him as breathing. She finds it irritatingly polite, even through the fog of her sickness. “Why didn’t you just leave me at the precinct?” Kym mutters.

“Excellent question,” he replies, twisting open a door at the end of the hall. The room is spartan but comfortable, with understated furnishings and a skylight that filters gauzy, buttery light off of every surface. The walls are painted robin’s egg blue. She notices that there aren’t any pictures on them. 

“Lieutenant William Hawkes, the most chivalrous man who ever lived,” she says. Her vision pulses in and out of focus, and Kym giggles at the strange effect, like standing inside of a kaleidoscope. She kicks off her shoes and crawls onto the bed, too exhausted to bother getting under the covers. 

Will spends a moment watching her. The sight of the formidable Sargaent Ladell curled up on his duvet like a cat in the sun has something of a dreamlike quality in its utter strangeness. Her features are softened in sleep, as though brushed with watercolor. “Ladell,” he says. “I’ll just be downstairs, alright?”

“Okay, _Willame_ ,” Kym murmurs. 

He turns to the door and then pauses. “You’ll let me know if you need anything?” 

Kym blinks her eyes open and pushes herself up onto her elbows, regarding Will with an open, guileless expression. A few tendrils of her dark hair stick up at odd angles, and he briefly acknowledges how charming the effect is. “You worry about me too much,” she says. 

Before he has the opportunity to answer, she falls back onto the bed and is quickly asleep, her chest rising and falling in an even cadence, lips parted in repose. 

“Don’t I know it,” he mutters, and closes the door. 

* * *

  
  


When Kym awakens next, she’s momentarily faced with the dreamlike panic of waking in an unfamiliar place. Hazy purple light spills through the open window, making the time impossible to discern, for the precipice of dusk and dawn arrive in the same milky hues, all soft edges and thick, buttery quiet. 

She hadn’t thought it possible, but she feels even more sick than before. A gnawing ache splits her in two, so viscerally painful that focusing on anything outside of herself becomes categorically impossible. 

Someone says her name, quiet and measured.

“Kym,” Will says. He cups his palm around her warm cheek. “Wake up. I need to give you your medicine.” 

“No.” 

“If you take the medicine,” he says, his voice softened, as though bargaining with a child, “You’ll be able to go back to sleep.” 

She opens her eyes and William Hawkes explodes into vibrant focus, bent over her with the full force of his attention, which is not unlike staring into the surface of the sun. “No,” she says. 

His hand hasn’t moved from her face, and, in the throes of her feverish judgement, she wishes desperately for him to keep it that way. “I don’t want it.”

“Then you’ll die, and I’ll be responsible.”

“Fine with me.” 

“Well, it’s not with me. Sounds inconvenient, and I’d be left with your dead body.” 

“I...” Kym says. Her eyes fall shut, and she turns her face further into his palm. “I forgot what I was going to say. I think I’m very sick.” 

He turns away from the bed and bends to retrieve something from the bedside table. “I’d say that’s a fair assumption,” he replies, rooting around in the drawer. At length, he retrieves a glass bottle and twists the cap off of it. 

“Last chance, Ladell,” he murmurs warningly. 

When she doesn’t stir, Will pours a splash of the syrup into a spoon and then, rather unceremoniously, shoves it into her mouth. 

Kym sits up, sputtering, her eyes widened with fury. He watches her with mild bemusement as she coughs the vile liquid down, her lips bent into a grimace. “What the _hell-_ ”

“I gave you fair warning,” he says, taking a cautious step back, as though to avoid collateral damage. 

She watches him soberly for a beat and then falls back onto the bed, her gaze fixed unseeingly on the ceiling. “You’re very fortunate that I’m too sick to do anything.” 

“I’m counting my lucky stars,” Will replies. 

The medicine feels warm in her chest and renders a heavy, dreamlike quality over her senses. She’d be hard-pressed to admit how nice it feels, considering the fact that he had to assault her to get her to take it in the first place. “Thanks,” she concedes after a long moment. 

He blinks slowly, his expression unreadable. “You’re welcome.”

She turns to him, looking down at her with that serious gaze, like ice over a freshwater pond. “What time is it?”

“Eight.”

“Oh, God,” she groans, pulling a heavy hand over her face. “I slept for _six hours_?”

“Seven, actually.” 

Kym asks him to point her towards the bathroom and she slowly makes her way through the motions of freshening up, suddenly acutely aware of how terrible she must look and cognizant enough to do something about it. She rinses her face with cool water and then steels her palms against the edge of the sink, her clinical gaze tracing the hollows under her eyelids, the gossamer sheen over the apples of her cheeks. “You look like hell,” she tells herself, and then flicks off the light.

When she returns to her room, she peels off her jacket and drapes it over the armchair next to the bed. Will swallows thickly at the sight of her, groggy and mussed with sleep in her rumpled dress shirt. Which is strange, because he’s seen her in it a million times. 

“You should probably eat something,” he says.

She climbs back into bed, this time piling the covers over her until only her face is visible. “Where did you learn all of this stuff?” 

“What stuff?”

“You’re disturbingly good at taking care of people.” She pokes a bit more of her face out, appraising him with one eye open, her bangs spilling over her forehead in dark waves. 

Something dark passes over his expression then, like fog rolling over water. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.” 

Kym draws her lip between her teeth. “Because of your mom?” She asks quietly.

He nods once, sharply, his jaw taut. 

She passed away last spring, and the funeral was a quiet, terrible thing, adorned in swathes of gray sky and heady carnations. Kym recalls how he didn’t cry, just stared blankly ahead, beyond the casket and the flowers and the pinched, sympathetic faces, as though willing himself far away from it all. 

She clears her throat. “Well, in the event that I give you the flu, I’ll gladly return the favor, _Willame_.” 

William snorts. “Yeah, right. You’d leave me to the wolves.”

“It doesn’t seem fair. Someone should take care of you,” she mutters, emboldened by her drowsiness. The statement hangs in the air like a rain-swollen cloud, the air suddenly thick with the weight of the admission. 

Kym yawns and rolls over so that her back faces him, the curve of her shoulder outlined in dusky light. As she falls asleep, she feels something drift over her cheek and brush her hair behind her ear.

But then the touch is gone, as swiftly as a passing breeze, and she’s left to wonder if it was just in her imagination. 

* * *

  
By three o’clock that morning, her fever is as high as it’s ever been. Perhaps that’s why she dreams of the explosion. 

The oppressive heat swallowed the sun in one fell swoop. After the bombing, Kym stood in the middle of the road and stared into the smothered horizon line, marveling at how quickly the ash and soot rendered everything in perpetual nightfall. Hot clouds rubbing against hot clouds, their combined friction cloying and unavoidable, sticking to her lungs and burrowing beneath her fingernails like tar. 

She will never forget the heat, deep enough that the memory of it finds her even years later, in her dreams. He finds her curled up with her head bent against her knees, pale and small in a slice of moonlight. 

Will slips a thermometer under her tongue and winces at the display. He peers at the red line, as though willing the number to go down. “Poor Ladell,” he murmurs. She stirs in the bed, her face a pale crescent, an errant smear of alabaster in the layered darkness. 

“Run,” she whispers, her voice thick with sleep. 

“Kym,” he says, kneeling at the side of the bed. “You’re dreaming-”

“ _Fire_ _—_ _!_ ” 

Kym scrambles onto her knees and claws blindly at the bedsheets, as though searching for traction. Her expression is as clear as glass; pupils blown wide with the imprint of a memory, lips parted in the precipice of a scream.

After a long moment, she turns to Will, his eyes twin beacons over black waters, quiet and watchful. 

“I…” Her mouth falls open, then snaps shut. 

Will bows his head. “I know. Hang on,” he says. He leaves the room and then returns moments later with a glass of water. She empties it feverishly, her hands trembling around the curve of the glass. 

“Do you want to talk about-”

“ _No_ ,” Kym replies, the word hitting the open air like a firecracker. There’s something in his gentle gaze, looking upon all of her ragged edges with a patient grace she doesn’t deserve that she’s certain would unspool her completely. 

Will watches her for a long moment, indecision flickering across his features. “Alright.” He hands her some more medicine and this time, she doesn’t protest, simply takes the spoon from his hand and swallows it back, wincing as it goes down. “What even _is_ that?”

He grins, relieved to see some of her usual verve restored in her expression. “Not sure. The nurse gave it to me before we left.”

“You didn’t _ask_?”

“Well,” he replies, “You haven’t died yet.”

Kym hums. “Fair enough.” She shifts her legs over the side of the bed and faces him, his gaze fixed intently on her face. “I’m sorry to cause so much trouble, _Willame._ You must be exhausted.”

He tips his head to one side, a blond curl spilling over his forehead boyishly. “I’m used to it. You cause me trouble even when you’re healthy.” 

She huffs. “You only pretend to hate it.” 

Will watches her with an unreadable look, his brows tented inward, as though trying to decipher something in her expression. “Sure. I _pretend_ to hate having years taken off of my life on a daily basis.”

“Well!” Kym chirps. “I’ll be out of your way soon, and then we can pretend this never happened.”

His lips twist into a flat line. “Right.”

They lapse into silence, then. Kym, suddenly feeling too restless to sleep, plants her elbows on her knees and leans forward. “Tell me something nice.” 

Will drops into the armchair, crossing his feet at the ankles. “Like a bedtime story?”

Kym’s expression flattens. “No, not _like a bedtime story_. A memory. Something nice that’s happened to you.”

He runs his palm over his jaw. “Wow. You really are running a fever. Can’t remember you ever expressing interest in my life.”

“Don’t expect it to last,” she replies, injecting false nonchalance into her tone. Truthfully, she feels as though something ineffable has changed between them. It only seems fair, then, that she’d seek penance in the form of a memory, in exchange for him taking something fundamental from her.

“I’m not sure, honestly,” he says, shrugging. “I can’t really remember.”

Kym rolls her eyes. “Try.” She lies back down, her eyes fallen shut. 

He draws in a breath, quiet with contemplation. “Learning the piano,” he says, after a long moment. “My mother taught me. When she was …” he pauses. “When I was young.”

Kym hums, urging him to go on. 

“It gave me a sense of purpose, something to focus on. I was a quiet kid. I didn’t really connect with anyone, aside from Lauren, though she was always closer with Dylan.” He recalls a wheat straw balanced between a wide, toothy grin, a tattered flat cap with a patch of blue sky sewn into the center, and he feels a pang of yearning, then, for times long passed. 

“Mm. What did you play?”

“She taught me Für Elise.”

“Cliche,” Kym murmurs, grinning sleepily. 

“Some others that didn’t have names. She loved to compose, when she was able to.” 

He describes the way they’d play together, side by side, and with deft fingertips they’d weave something into existence where nothing one was. Will would join her early in the morning, when the air was still chilled and softened with nightfall, before he had to leave for school. They’d craft duets together, as though coaxing the sun from below the horizon, to an audience of birdsong and the hum of a city stirring from its rest.

Will glances over and realizes she’s drifted back into a soundless sleep, her shoulder rising and falling in time with her even breaths. He stands and crosses the room to her, that sharp face now relaxed into the shadow of a pout, her lashes casting tangled shadows over her pale cheeks. 

Her eyes drift open languidly, unfocused and fogged with fatigue. He presses his lips to the hinge of her jaw, just once. Feather-light, as though fearful that she might evaporate, his breath a wash of warm velvet over her cheek.

They watch each other in silence, ensnared in a moment that is as transient as a shadow passing over a windowpane. She will always remember this, she thinks. The way they looked at each other, each holding a hundred insufficient words under their tongues. The way his eyes gleamed impossibly bright, as though conjured by some type of alchemy, as though pulled directly from the belly of the ocean. 

“Kym,” he says, soft and low, and he isn’t sure why. 

He brings his thumb to his lip, as though holding the memory of her skin there. And then he stands and leaves, pulling the door shut behind him.   
  


* * *

  
A lilting ballad sweeps up the staircase and under the bathroom door, ricocheting off the walls in a pleasant melody that finds Kym as she’s showering the next morning. She listens, lulled by the warm spray and the tinkling music, which together evoke the feeling of standing amidst a summer rain. 

Kym dries off and changes into a pile of clothing he’d left folded on the nightstand for her and then quietly makes her way downstairs, following the music until she finds him in the foyer, ablaze like polished gold in the mid-morning. He sits with his back to her, spine ramrod-straight in a square of sunlight, curved around a grand piano in a posture that is quietly commanding without saying anything at all: Shoulders pitched back and head bowed in concentration, all tight lines and disciplined angles. His fingertips drift deftly over the keys with a honed, practiced sort of grace. 

Will feels her, of course, the way he always does — like the surface of a star, bright and enrapturing and impossible to ignore. But he continues playing, letting her slide into the bench beside him, slotted in like two ends to a puzzle.

When the piece reaches its conclusion, he stills his hands, the pads of his fingertips still resting lightly over the ivory. “You survived,” he says. 

“Ah!” She replies, shrugging. “Would take a lot more than the flu to get rid of me.” 

He grins wryly. “Sounds about right. Fever’s broken?” 

“Looks like it. You might consider changing occupations and becoming a doctor, assuming the whole Lieutenant thing doesn’t work out. I’m a way better shot than you, anyway.” 

“ _Tch_ ,” Will sneers. “When you’re feeling well enough, we’ll prove that at the shooting range.”

Something silent passes between them, then. She clears her throat and looks down at her palms, her fingers linked in her lap. “Uh. Thank you. For, you know, making sure I didn’t die.”

He turns to her, light spilling over his face ethereally. “You’d do the same for me.” 

She huffs. “I thought you said I’d leave you to the wolves?” 

“Maybe I was wrong-”

“Oh! The indomitable Lieutenant Hawkes admits he was _wrong_?”

Will grins, burrowing a dimple into his cheek. “Only occasionally.” He drifts into another piece with the seamlessness of an inhalation, a minute shift of his posture. 

“One of hers?” 

“Yes,” he says, soft as moonlight. Exhausted with pretense, she leans into him, then, her cheek pressed against the curve of his shoulder, adrift in the push and pull of his movements, busy cultivating a memory like a seed in soil. 

“It’s really nice,” she says. 

He turns his head, and his warm breath drifts over the curve of her ear when he presses his lips into her hair. Just once, so similar to the way he kissed her cheek the night before, as though memorizing some small piece of her. 

* * *

It isn’t until her fever passes that Kym understands the gravity of the situation. Namely, the gravity that is the fact that she would, in no uncertain terms, like to kiss William Hawkes. When this pesky realization makes itself known, Kym devotes the rest of the week to studiously avoiding him. It works swimmingly, until he finally tracks her down one night when she’s walking home after work.

“I’ve finally found her,” he says dryly. “The long-lost Sargaent Ladell.”

Kym stops in her tracks and spins to find him regarding her bemusedly, arms crossed over his chest, framed by the halo of a streetlight. He’s never looked so handsome — wild and unstoppable, out of control and within it at the same time, like a controlled burn. 

“I was starting to wonder if you really did die from the flu, after all.”

Kym holds her hands out and twitches her fingers in a limp imitation of jazz hands. “Alas, here I am.” 

He tilts his head, studying her. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” she snaps. 

“Uh huh,” he replies slowly, his gaze narrowing. 

“I’ve been busy.”

“Busy,” he intones.

“Yep. All of that paperwork I missed while I was on death's doorstep.”

“I see,” he says, stopping in front of her. She looks as good as new, with all of the color and vivacity restored in her, that sharp mouth quirked in an expression of perpetual mischief. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I kissed you.” 

She laughs breathlessly. “Well, only on a technicality. Barely even a kiss, really. One could even call it friendly.”

“ _Friendly_? Huh. It seems that I’m terrible at making my intentions known, then.” He steps closer, still, near enough that he can trace the reflection of the moonlight in her sharp gaze. “And, while we’re at it, you’re an awful liar.” 

“Am not, _Willame._ Quite presumptuous of you, to assume I’d just fall at your feet.” 

“Oh, I’d never assume such a thing,” he says, capturing a lock of dark hair in his fingertips. “I always knew I’d have to work much harder than that.” Will tucks the strand behind her ear, letting his hand hover at the side of her face. He brings his other palm up to the other side, now cradling her jaw. 

“Okay, _fine.”_ She blows a breath through her teeth. “I was avoiding you-”

“ _Obviously-_ ”

“-Because this wouldn’t work. I annoy you terribly.”

Will hums. “True.”

“We’re always bickering.” 

He nods, tracing his thumb over her cheek. 

“And…” She blinks lazily. “And I had a third point, but I can’t remember what it was.”

He chuckles, pressing his lips to the corner of her eye, right over her birthmark. “You do annoy me terribly. You’re incredibly loud. You always say exactly what you’re thinking.” He draws back. “You also happen to be the most disaster-prone person on the face of the planet.” 

Kym rolls her eyes. “Disasters seek me out. I can’t be held responsible for the collateral damage.”

“And,” he continues. “I like you. Very much, in fact. Despite my better judgement.”

“Gee, _thanks._ That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Lieutenant,” she quips. Her expression grows thoughtful, and she glances down at the snow-slickened pavement, then back to his face. “I meant what I said before. About how someone should take care of you.”

Will nods. “I know you did.”

She grins wickedly, tossing her arm around his neck. “I’d be happy to oblige, _assuming_ -”

He groans.

“- _Assuming_ you’d return the favor with an endless supply of watermelon, at my beck and call.” 

Will tips his head thoughtfully. “Are there any other conditions I should know about?”

“Nope.” 

She kisses him, then, quickly and without warning, which is how Kym Ladell does everything. Sharp and fast and unexpected, like a passing downpour. She nips his lip teasingly before they pull apart, her expression softened with contentment. 

“I had a whole plan, you know,” he says haughtily, the edges of his lips twitching with reluctant amusement. “For how I wanted to kiss you. And now it’s ruined.”

“If we’re going to do this, you should probably get comfortable with the idea of not having a plan. I find them exceedingly boring.” 

“You terrify me,” he replies warmly. And he kisses her again, this time the way he wanted to, soft and languorous and memorizing. 

When he pulls back, his eyes are so bright with happiness that Kym wonders why she ever bothered wasting time missing out on being the cause of it. “A compromise,” he says softly. 

“A compromise,” she replies, tilting her forehead against his. “I think I could get used to that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Will: Give it up, Ladell. I know you have a crush on me.  
> Kym: Uh, DO NOT? *Jazz hands*
> 
> Some soft Kywi to start your weekend off right ... ❤️ Though, someone should probably tell Will to keep his lips off of flu-ridden people. 
> 
> You all make me happy. Thank you for letting me tell my stories. Love, love, love you!
> 
> -Rabbit


End file.
